


hope got my hands tied round my back

by m4rkab



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Angst, Dehumanization, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, everything you'd expect from the farm, sort of??, spoilers for the demo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 10:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m4rkab/pseuds/m4rkab
Summary: And in that moment of weightlessness, feeling almost like you are flying, that terrible and wonderful second of freedom, watching the ground rise up to meet you like a wall of grey, you hope the impact will kill you quickly.You’ve had enough pain for a dozen lifetimes.





	hope got my hands tied round my back

**Author's Note:**

> back on my angst BS :)
> 
> no sidestep pronouns mentioned this time around i dont think, but mine is nb so they/them may have slipped in somewhere
> 
> title is also don't you cry for me by cobi...what can i say there are some Good Lines for suicidal sidestep

When you fall from the window, Heartbreak’s grip on your mind loosening, snapping like threads stretched too tightly, the last thing you see is the terror in Ortega’s eyes.  
  
The last thing you hear is his scream.

And in that moment of weightlessness, feeling almost like you are flying, that terrible and wonderful second of freedom, watching the ground rise up to meet you like a wall of grey, you hope the impact will kill you quickly.

You’ve had enough pain for a dozen lifetimes.  
  


* * *

 

But of course you do not die. Death is easy. Simple. An ending.

The Farm would never allow you that.

You do not get that kind of mercy.

Instead, the ambulance comes, sirens blaring. It screeches to a stop before you as you bleed red onto the concrete, and you know even before the doors open that this is over. This masquerade as Sidestep. As if you could ever be anything other than a re-gene. As if you could be a hero.

Because if the Farm does not know you are here now, when the doctors peel back your armor and skinsuit and see the tattoos, shiny and orange and unmistakable, they will.

So when the ambulance opens, and Regina is there, smiling that predator’s smile that has been burned into your mind, you cannot find it in you to be surprised. You cannot even find it in yourself to be afraid, because in the back of your mind you always knew this was going to happen.

The terror, you’re sure, will come later.

But now there is nothing but icy, distant resignation in the pit of your stomach as they take you into the ambulance and lay you on the bed and slide a needle into the crook of your elbow.

If you concentrated, you could list out every one of your broken bones, all of your internal injuries, the precise points where the bruising will hinder your movement. They wanted you to be able to self-report, and it’s kept you alive and out of the hospital this long, but it’s the feel of the needle sliding in that is what makes you want to throw up.

Regina places a hand on your shoulder, and you try not to flinch, but you think she sees it anyways, by the way she tilts her head as she gazes down at you. They always do.

There was a reason you were never afraid of the villains.

“Don’t you get it?” she asks. Her smile is sad, now, though that might be the blurriness of your vision. She stands over you on the bed, where the needle in your arm is turning everything fuzzy and unreal around the edges, and says, “This is the only place you belong.”

The worst part of it is not the pain of your broken body. The worst part of is not that you still remember the acid burning through Anathema’s face, the taste of metal against your tongue. The worst part of it is not even that the Farm has found you – that means too much, too many things to consider, you know what they do to re-genes who have escaped.

The worst part is that there was a time you believed her, before.

You know she will make you believe it again.  
  


* * *

 

You used to love them.

Of course you did. You knew nothing else.

You were never under the illusion you were a person, but at least you thought you could be a good tool. You wanted approval; you don’t know if it was programmed into you, but that makes it easier to rationalize how quickly you ran to the Rangers, how quickly you ran to Ortega.

Mostly it makes it easier to justify how you obeyed their every command, like a dog to its master. How you wanted to please them, even when your effort was rewarded by nothing other than pain and the demand that you do _better_. That you had to. So you would pick yourself up over and over again, even when your thoughts grew syrupy and slow with exhaustion, even when your body was bruised and battered and bleeding, even when your ever-present headache was hammering the inside of your skull like a jackhammer, and keep going like the machine you were. The machine you are.

A perfectly crafted weapon.

They didn’t call their re-genes dogs for no reason.

If you weren’t strong enough, you were disposable, and back then before Heartbreak you wanted to live, alien as the concept seems now. You heard the stories of re-genes being dismantled for their organs, no different than a car scrapped for parts, and if you had been smart, if you had known what was going to happen, maybe you would have –

Well. You didn’t.

You got smart, you got strong. You can say it was for survival all you want but you know it was for the Farm. They made you scoop the thoughts out of peoples’ minds until it was second nature, until you could do it with the precision of the scalpel they wanted you to be; they broke your bones until the pain no longer made you scream and hurt you in every way they could imagine until you could take it without a flicker of an eye in response and then when you were finally what they wanted they taught you how to pretend to be human.

But they never let you forget you weren’t.  
  


* * *

 

Time wears on with the agonizing slowness you can only feel when you dread every moment of it.

You start to think Anathema got the better deal.

When you turned the gun to your mouth in that dark apartment, it wasn’t entirely Heartbreak moving your arm. You know that now. You don’t think you ever really _wanted_ to die prior to that, but then it is hard to think logically about anything when you spend every waking hour in pain, when your thoughts can be accessed at any time, when not even your dreams are your own.

It is almost laughable that you thought the Farm was bad before.

They take away your hair, your clothes; you know without asking you will never see Sidestep’s suit again unless it is to remind you what you could never be. You are not allowed a sense of self, because that would mean you are worth something beyond being a tool.

You are not allowed to die, because your body does not belong to you.

And yet thinking about it becomes the only solace you have.

You have no privacy now, not even in your own head. The dampeners make you feel fuzzy and nauseous and dull your telepathy to almost nothing but you know they can still hear your every thought, because they have always been stronger than you ever were, no matter how hard you tried to pretend otherwise. No matter how desperately you started to think – to hope – that you were free. That they wouldn’t find you.

But you don’t think the Farm cares about that particular act of rebellion, even though they must know how badly you wish the fall had killed you.

How badly you wish Ortega had not stopped you from pulling the trigger.

After all, you need to break an animal before you can tame it.  
  


* * *

 

They programmed you with all the basics, but there were a lot of things – the simple human things – they did not care much to document. Ortega always seemed torn between amusement and confusion when he offered you a new food or drink, or you tried to use a new piece of technology that everyone should have known about. Mostly it just made you feel even more out of place, but you couldn’t exactly tell him why.

Up until then you had never thought that someday you could be anything other than an object – they made you to feel that way – so of course that included anything metaphysical. That included anything about death. You were surprised to find a lot on the subject, though religion never interested you – perhaps because of what you are.

There is no greater purpose in being a weapon.

So you did not read much into the majority of it, but you won’t deny you liked the concept that there was something after. Something better than the Farm. But that was just a moment of naïve thinking; that was for humans. Real people, not a hollow imitation wearing a lab-grown face and a fake smile.

And even if it wasn’t none of it meant anything, no way to know if it was true or not, but…

Still.

You wonder what happens to a machine when it dies.

You wonder if you can truly die when you were never alive to begin with.

You can’t deny that nothingness has a certain appeal.  
  


* * *

 

You have never been good at admitting defeat.

You think that must be true because you are still standing. Still breathing.

Though that isn’t by your own choice.

You have been forged in the heat of every flame the Farm could conjure and some they could not, honed to a razor-sharp edge; but fire destroys as much as it creates, and by now you do not know what is still holding you together.

You have lost track of the days since they brought you back. The window feels like a distant memory by now, almost as though it happened to someone entirely different, and – in some respects, it did.

You are not Sidestep any longer, if indeed you ever were.

This is something the Farm will never let you forget.

You are CB-1249-09. A re-gene. A thing.

But though you might be nothing more than a thing you are a stubborn one, in your own desperate hollowed-out way. After so long you know full well stubbornness is the last refuge you have. No matter how hard you cling it will slip away in the end, and the mere act is so exhausting when everything about the Farm is engineered to pull it away from you.

All anyone has ever wanted from you is the truth, after all. And the truth is this: you are a weapon.

Sometimes it feels like it would be simpler just to accept it.

You think you should be more worried about that thought than you are.  
  


* * *

 

They lead you into the office, and order you to sit.

You do, because at this point there is no reason not to, and Regina smiles at you and folds her hands together on top of her desk.

“Did you really think you were someone?” She sounds almost sympathetic, but you know better than to trust her.

At one time you knew better than to trust anyone.

“Did you think they would care enough to come _save_ you?”

There is a newspaper on the desk. You never kept up with the papers when you were Sidestep, you can’t identify the brand, but you don’t think you will ever forget Ortega’s face.

This is a bold thing to claim, at the Farm, and you know the moment you think it that you will.

They will make sure of it.                                   

Ortega is smiling. Not at the camera, exactly, but at the woman at his side. He is smiling and he looks like he is about to laugh, and you can imagine –

The thought that strikes you like one of Ortega’s lightning bolts is this – you _can’t_ imagine his voice.

For one moment, your control slips; your hand twitches, and you only keep yourself from reaching out at the last minute.

Regina doesn’t seem to notice; if she does, it doesn’t show. She keeps looking at you, as if she’s awaiting an answer, and it’s been so long that for a moment you don’t know what response to give her.

Of course you never forgot what you were. It was impossible to forget when every time you took off your clothing you could see the neon-orange markings, slick and shiny as spilled oil; when you could trace the pattern of your barcode by memory alone. When every time someone touched you you had the brief, terrified thought that they would somehow feel the lines of your tattoos through your clothes – that they would know you were not a human, just an experiment playing pretend.

But Ortega –

Ortega.

You look at the newspaper again, at his face; the curve of his mouth and the unruly mess of his hair rendered in flat black-and-white. You knew it wasn’t special, what you had with him, not when you never let him close enough that you would so much as be in danger of him seeing the brands under your clothes; you heard too much through the rumors and what news you picked up for that, but you would have thought –

No. When you think about it, it makes sense.

You aren’t real, after all.

You never were.

“No,” you say.

You mean it.


End file.
